This week, it was nearly impossible to avoid the images of Jeremy Allen White, clad in Calvin Klein underwear, plastered all over our feeds and on billboards. Sure, since the ’90s Calvin Klein advertisements have become synonymous with alluring images, which often center bodies rather than underwear. But this same week, a Calvin Klein ad with FKA Twigs was banned in the U.K. The photos from March 2023 feature the songstress and dancer posing naked with a denim button-down draped over her with “Calvins or nothing” written at the top of the image.
Apparently, she is baring too much skin according to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), which deemed the image offensive and is banning it in the U.K. after receiving complaints from people.
“The ad used nudity and centered on FKA Twigs’s physical features rather than the clothing, to the extent that it presented her as a stereotypical sexual object,” a statement from ASA read. The complaints were also geared toward Kendall Jenner’s 2023 Calvin Klein topless advertisement images, but ASA did not ban those images.
In response, Calvin Klein stood behind its images saying they “were not vulgar and were of two confident and empowered women who had chosen to identify with the Calvin Klein brand, and the ads contained a progressive and enlightened message.”
“I do not see the ‘stereotypical sexual object’ that they have labeled me,” wrote FKA Twigs in response. “I see a beautiful strong woman of color whose incredible body has overcome more pain than you can imagine.”
She went on to call out the blatant double standards, and although she didn’t mention the Allen White advertisement, we will go ahead and call out the blatant double standard with the Allen White advertisement.
She then wrote: “I am proud of my physicality and hold the art I create with my vessel to the standards of women like Josephine Baker, Eartha Kitt and Grace Jones who broke down barriers of what it looks like to be empowered and harness a unique embodied sensuality.”